A nanosyntactic approach to Dutch deadjectival verbs
There are three ways of deriving verbs in Dutch: through zero marking, through suffixation, and through
prefixation. We focus on prefixed deadjectival verbs, contrasting two views. According to the first view, prefixed verbs are
left-headed: the prefix is responsible for the change in category, i.e. [
V ver [
A breed]]. The second view
holds that prefixed verbs are right-headed, and involve a zero verbalizing suffix, i.e. [
V ver [
V
[
A breed] ∅]]. We argue in this paper for a mixed, nanosyntactic, approach. We adopt
Ramchand’s (2008) decomposition of the verb and argue that the prefix spells out part of the verbal
structure and the verbal root spells out another part.
Article outline
- 1.Introduction
- 2.Background: Derived verbs in Dutch
- 2.1Deriving Dutch verbs
- 2.2Prefixed verbs and Right-Hand Head Rule
- 2.3Resultative semantics
- 2.4The inchoative-causative ambiguity
- 3.Ingredients for the analysis
- 3.1Phrasal spellout and Nanosyntax
- 3.2Decomposing the verb
- 4.The account
- 5.Conclusion
- Notes
-
References